SUCCEEDING IN MARRIAGE

A few weeks ago I had taken my wife for her usual visit to the gynecologist. While we sat at the reception waiting to be attended to, one of the women waiting with us couldn’t help noticing my wife’s beautiful bag. She inquired from her where she had gotten it from and that sparked off a conversation as is the habit of the female gender. Feeling left out by this “bag business” I buried myself on my “toy” as I partially listened to the ongoing conversation. 

When this lady’s turn came to go in, she quickly asked for my wife’s contacts. My wife flashed out her business card and when the lady realized that my wife and I were marriage counselors, she made a statement that set me thinking. This is what she said, “when I have problems in my marriage I know now who to call”.

How funny it is that people only think about working on or attending to their marriages when things are bad. But we hardly do anything to work on or improve on our relationships when things are seemingly okay. When is the last time you and your spouse read a book on marriage or attended a marriage seminar? If there is one area that many of us are failing in, it is in this very important area of our lives that we so often leave unattended.

Great marriages don’t just happen by accident. Probably the single key most important ingredient in succeeding in marriage is the fact that a couple is unwilling to settle for just getting by in their relationship. It never ceases to amaze us (once crisis has been averted) how many couples are willing to settle for the status quo, instead of moving forward and taking their love to the next level. What they don't realize is that if nothing is done to improve on the relationship, they will find themselves in another crisis or a similar crisis like the one they had before.

Make Your Marriage a Priority. Invest in it and don’t just wait for things to go bad before you seek for help. They say that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. But in coaching we say that if it isn’t broken, make it better. Therefore keep your relationship tools sharpened, by attending marriage conferences, reading books and enlisting the help of a coach to hold you accountable in your relationship.

ARE YOU READY FOR "IT"?

We have been amazed many times when we hear of how people got into marriage with very little or no preparation at all. Even in the Church the assumption has been that since people are 'saved' and attend Church regularly then they must know what they need to do when they get married.

Imagine people entering into a lifelong commitment that is challenging and difficult in this manner. In this day and age when we have become so consumed with the event, the wedding show, that we forget about the process, the marriage itself. The other day we visited with my sister in-law who together with her husband run a deco business. While there I picked up a magazine on weddings and was shocked to find out how much money people are spending on weddings in this city. We saw wedding budgets that ranged from 500,000 Kenya shillings to 3 million and wondered how on earth we pulled through with the budget we had those days for our own wedding.

Nothing wrong with having a great and expensive wedding if you can afford it. But what is of more importance is that you prepare well as well for your marriage. How much in terms of time, energy and finances are you investing in your future as a married couple? You see for any team to win in any game, how well they prepare for it matters a lot.

It is because of this that we are having an open day for those singles who are planning to get married or who are still searching or just beginning a relationship on the 24th of this month at the Horizon Capital boardroom along Ngong Road opposite the Nairobi Baptist Church. This will be a Saturday and the program will run from 2pm to 5pm. We will be sharing with those who attend what we are doing to help people prepare well for their "happily ever after."

For more details please get in touch via this blog, or Facebook, see you there.

"Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance"

YES OUR PAST DOES AFFECT OUR PRESENT

Last weekend I attended what we call a Champions weekend. This was an event organized by my Church and was crafted to help us live a victorious life as Champions.

One of the things we dealt with over this past weekend was our past hurts, hurts that begun with sinful acts done against us which have then been compounded by our own reactions to them.  These emotional wounds are not necessarily physical, but are wounds to the soul or spirit of man that are carried and experienced within the person themselves. This pain of the past hurt rules many lives. It simmers, stifles, and sometimes shuts a person completely down. Their presence is revealed by their symptoms which can range from outbursts of anger, low self-esteem to being an alcoholic and sexual perversion.

Unfortunately many of us enter into marriage with these hurts and like they say hurting people hurt others, so we end up hurting those closest to us, our spouse and children. We come into marriage with a lot of emotional baggage from our childhood.  As one woman put it, “To have a baggage you would have to have a suitcase to put it in. My past was so messed up there was no suitcase; it was more like a pile of trash.”

This woman was raised up in a very painful way. Her Father abandoned her and her mother when she was a very little girl and following her father’s abandonment, her mama started drinking and spending time with boyfriends, who came and went and used not only her mama but pretty Becca too. Her mama couldn’t stay, and her only daughter must not have been worth carrying along.  So she was thrown from one relative to another until she grew up and begun living on her own.

Isolation thus became both her protection and punishment and then the ultimate abandonment. She grew up with great anger because of what had happened to her and she found herself not trusting people and fearing that her friends would also abandon her. This greatly affected her relationships and even her marriage couple of years later. She feared being abandoned by her husband as her parents had abandoned her. So because of this fear she always reacted violently that her husband one day took off. Talk of what you feared actually happening to you. Yes her hubby also abandoned her but really because of her own fears, which were driven by her past hurts.

"The memories of our past make up the fabric of who we are." 

BOYS 2 MEN

The other day a friend of mine invited my wife and I for an occasion in his house. It was to celebrate the naming of his first-born son by his father who the boy is actually named after. This was the first time that we were attending such a function and what I witnessed there really intrigued me.

Apart from the many visitors who travelled all the way from the Mount Kenya region to witness this great occasion, and the wonderful gifts (in terms of cash) that this little boy (oblivious of what was happening) was given, and not forgetting the wonderful food we ate; this occasion reminded me once again of the important role a Father (or grandfather in this case) has in the life of the young men or boys. 

This function reminded me of one father-naming story in the scriptures that in particular intrigues me. It centers on Benjamin, the last born son of Jacob. Rachel gives birth to the boy but will die as a result. With her last breathe she names him Ben-Oni, which means “son of my sorrow”. But Jacob intervenes and names him Benjamin – “son of my right hand” (Genesis 35:18). This is a critical move, when a boy draws his identity no longer from the mother, but from the father. 

A boy is brought into the world by his mother, and she is the center of his universe in those first tender months and years. She suckles him, nurtures him, protects him, she sings to him, reads to him, watches over him…… She often names him as well, tender names like “my little lamb” “sweetheart”……. But a boy cannot grow to manhood with a name like that. There comes a time for the shift when he begins to seek out his father’s attention, affection and affirmation. It is then that it takes an active intervention by the man to name his boy.

“Women can change the embryo to a boy, but only the men can change the boy to a man"                           – Robert Bly 

ADAM, WHERE ARE YOU?

We are living in different and difficult times than our Fathers lived. Things have changed. The women are no longer content in just staying at home and raising babies. The society has shown them that they are equal if not better than men. And so now any thing that a  man can do a woman can do also. Women in some homes have even taken the role of being the bread winner. In short the woman has been empowered.

So what does this mean as far as marriage is concerned. Does it mean that just because the woman is ahead economically, earns more than the man, that she is now the head of the family? Does the woman empowerment mean that her role in the family has changed. No, being ahead doesn't necessarily mean that you are now the head.

God is clear about the matter of equality. I Peter 3:7; the Bible exhorts husbands to treat their wives as equal partners in marriage. Husband and Wife are equal, but their roles are different. The man is and should be the head of the family and the wife should submit herself to his leadership. But where the man fails to take leadership, like the first man Adam did in Genesis chapter 3:6, the woman is left with no option but to usurp his authority and what happens next is a disaster.

This is what is happening in our Nation today with the whole issue of Husband battering. The man has absconded his role, he has failed to take responsibility in the home no wonder the women are asking where are the men? Adam where are you? Thus the woman has had to not only handle her responsibilities of taking care of the home and children, but also taking over the man's responsibilities of providing. And thus she ends up being very frustrated and the result is the violence we are witnessing now in our nation.

DO I STILL JAZZ YOU?

Last Saturday at IBS-Biblica we had a ball. We want to believe many marriages were rejuvenated as Gracie challenged the couples to ask themselves this question, "Do I still jazz you?" Emphasis here on the word STILL. After that we jazzed each other into the night as we danced with each other till midnight. It was lovely.

I believe like us, you once jazzed each other but with time, with the clatters of life coming in between us, our marriages have run out of wine. We need a miracle for the ordinary relationship (water) to be turned into wine once again. We want to still be jazzed with each other; To enjoy each other, not merely enduring each other; To stop being frustrated with each other and start fascinating each other all over again.

We need to look back and see the height from which we have fallen (fallen out of love), and repent, turn around and begin to do the things we did at first. The fact that we did these things during our courtship or in our early years of marriage is proof that yes, we can still jazz each other.

 That is romance, and that is what will spice up our marriages. So be courageous enough and dare to ask your spouse, "Do I still jazz you?" Then go the extra-mile in asking him/her, "What can I do to jazz you? What do I need to stop doing in order to jazz you? What do I need to continue doing to continue jazzing you? And finally, what do I need to do to start jazzing you once again?

Have a jazzing week.

Who said it takes a lot of cash to be romantic? It really doesn't. All it takes is a little effort and creativity from you.” - Anonymous